Lincoln supported his generals on the exchange issue. It was not a comfortable decision, but whenever he felt his resolve begin to slip, he would take out his wallet and read the editorials he had clipped and saved. They supported the need to get tough.5
Confederates responded to hard war with a new strategy of their own. Through political subversion, small unit raids, and incendiary strikes, they tried to undermine support for the war by targeting and demoralizing civilians in the North. This “irregular warfare” was meant to keep up pressure on the administration to end the war quickly by a negotiated settlement. Other raids, aimed at prisoner-of-war camps, were intended to relieve the Confederates’ manpower shortage by freeing soldiers from captivity in the North. All of these operations would be planned and run from offices set up in Canada.
In May 1864, the Confederate government sought to defuse the escalating crisis by releasing hundreds of sick prisoners, even without an exchange. Though ostensibly a goodwill gesture, this move backfired. The men were emaciated, and many were near death. Seeing their condition, Secretary of War Stanton launched a vigorous campaign calling attention to the rebels’ treatment of prisoners. “There appears to have been a deliberate system of savage and barbarous treatment and starvation,” Stanton told a congressional committee, “the result of which will be that few, if any, of the prisoners that have been in their hands during the past winter will ever again be in a condition to render any service or even to enjoy life.”6
Stanton’s charges escalated the prisoner issue. All through the summer, newspapers told of abuse, starvation, and the use of prisoners as human shields. Each side blamed the other, and while they pointed fingers, prisoners continued to die on both sides in staggering numbers. Northerners claimed that Southerners were deliberately cruel, and Confederates blamed Grant and others for refusing to swap prisoners. The lack of an exchange, they said, forced them to feed and shelter an increasing number of prisoners when they could not even feed their own troops. Their prison camps, such as Andersonville and Belle Isle, consisted of little more than tents, and the soldiers who returned from such places were mere skeletons. After months of emotional debate, Stanton issued orders to cut prisoner rations in retaliation. His measure met with widespread public support.7
SOMETIME IN AUGUST, Booth stopped at the Holliday Street Theatre and recognized an old friend from St. Timothy’s Hall. William Stockton Arnold had not seen Booth in years, and they had a lot to talk about. The subject turned to Billy’s brother Sam, who had also known Booth from school days. Sam Arnold was back from the war and was now living at his uncle’s farm, five miles north of town. At that moment, he was in the city, and if Booth would like, Billy could send him over for a visit.8
Samuel Bland Arnold came from a respected Baltimore family. Six feet tall, with dark hair and complexion, he had a genteel look and an assertive air. His father, George, owned one of the city’s largest bakeries, and had used his wealth to give his sons a good education. The Arnolds were a Southern family, and when the war broke out, Sam enlisted in Company C of the 1st Maryland Infantry, C.S.A. Discharged for medical reasons, he found work as a paymaster’s clerk, and then with his brother George in the Nitre and Mining Bureau at Augusta, Georgia. On hearing that his mother was ill, Arnold returned home in early 1864, and found that Baltimore was a different place. He was distressed to see old friends who wouldn’t even shake his hand. Feeling restless and out of place, he tried to join a U.S. Army expedition in the Northwest, but lacked the funds to make the trip.9
Sam Arnold had not seen Booth in eleven years, and he could hardly believe the changes in his old friend. “Instead of gazing upon the countenance of the mild and timid schoolmate of former years,” he recalled, “I beheld a deep thinking man of the world before me, with highly distinguishing marks of beauty, intelligence, and gentlemanly refinement, different from the common order of man. . . .” Booth had arranged a meeting at Barnum’s Hotel, in the center of town. He was a marvelous host, and regaled his boyhood friend with tales of the stage and wartime travels. In a few minutes, there was a knock on the door, and a small, dark-haired man joined the conversation. This was Mike O’Laughlen, Booth’s friend and neighbor from Exeter Street. Arnold and O’Laughlen had never met, but both had served in the same Confederate regiment early in the war. A few glasses of wine made them as chummy as lifelong companions.10
Talk turned to the war, and Booth found that they all supported the Confederacy. It was hard to be optimistic these days. The North was pressing its advantages, grinding the South into a slow and agonizing submission. Provisions were scarce, and Confederate desertion rates were high. Under the circumstances, Lee could hold out for only so long. The South was in a quandary, but the war was not over yet. Booth believed that some drastic measure might force the Lincoln administration to resume the prisoner exchange—thus giving the Confederacy a resurgence of strength in the ranks.
He had an idea. Mr. Lincoln was known to make frequent trips to the Soldiers’ Home, just outside Washington, and he often rode alone, over isolated country roads. A group of men could overtake his carriage, put the president in handcuffs, and transport him through Southern Maryland and into Virginia. They could have him in Richmond before a day had passed. With Abraham Lincoln as a hostage, his government would have to resume the prisoner exchange. Though abducting him would not be easy, it was certainly possible. And if the plan succeeded, Lincoln’s captors would have saved thousands of prisoners’ lives—not to mention the life of the Confederacy itself. Their names would live forever.
Arnold and O’Laughlen agreed to take part in the scheme, and they pledged themselves to secrecy and good faith. They parted company and went back home to await further developments. Booth went to New York, as he had planned, and would begin work on the plot after his return.11
Whether or not Booth claimed credit for the idea, plans to capture Lincoln had been discussed in the newspapers for years, and one editor later said that “such a plan was regarded at that time as fair game . . . there was very little blame attached to the idea, even in the North.” Thomas Nelson Conrad, of the Confederate Signal Service, believed that only one of these schemes ever reached Jefferson Davis, and he firmly rejected the idea. Though someone might have pulled it off, it seemed foolhardy to make the attempt.
Daring captures had been tried in the past, sometimes with stunning results. On the night of March 9, 1863, Confederate Major John Singleton Mosby escorted Union General Edwin Stoughton right out of his headquarters in Fairfax Court House, Virginia. Mosby had been harassing Union operations in Northern Virginia for some time, and capturing the “Gray Ghost” had become Stoughton’s top priority. But hunter and prey traded places when Mosby walked into the general’s bedroom in full Confederate uniform. He yanked the covers off Stoughton and announced that he was taking him prisoner. His plan succeeded precisely because it was so improbable, and the incident made the name of John S. Mosby legendary in the South.12
Had Colonel Johnson succeeded in capturing Lincoln, he too would have covered himself in glory. But when Johnson was reassigned to the prison break, his abduction plan was left untried. Still, his idea spread. Thomas Nelson Conrad, the spy, had heard about this proposed abduction scheme in Richmond, and he decided to try it himself. He came up with a similar plan, and he even got the Confederate War Department’s approval to go through with it. In the fall of 1864, Conrad went to Washington to study the movements and habits of his intended victim. He worked out the details, and in time put a team in place, ready to take action. When the time arrived, they took up positions along Seventh Street, north of the city, and waited for the president’s carriage. When it finally appeared, it was surrounded by cavalry.13
That was a stunning development. The president had never been so closely guarded before. He had often received threatening letters, but few around him believed he was in any real danger. Even Secretary of State Seward, who should have known better, passed the threats off as “no grounds for
anxiety.” Seward explained his views in a letter to the consul in Paris:
Assassination is not an American practice or habit, and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system.... This conviction of mine has steadily gained strength since the Civil War began. Every day’s experience confirms it. The President, during the heated season, occupies a country house near the Soldiers’ Home, two or three miles from the city. He goes to and fro from that place on horseback, night and morning, unguarded. I go there unattended at all hours, by daylight and moonlight, by starlight and without any light....14
The president was always accessible, even in wartime. It came with the job. It was common knowledge that a person could see him almost any time by going to the White House. One could shake his hand at any public reception, or have a personal interview by merely waiting in line. His home was a public building, and its open-door policy was considered unavoidable.
He was not entirely unprotected, though. Washington had been heavily occupied since early in the war, and a couple of regiments camped at or near the White House. The Bucktails of Company K, 150th Pennsylvania Infantry, were posted on the south lawn, and they came to regard themselves as a “bodyguard” unit for the president. In fact, they were nothing of the kind, at least in the modern sense. People still came and went as they pleased. Even Cabinet meetings were fair game. A “fair, plump lady” from Dubuque interrupted one just to get a look at Mr. Lincoln. Such things happened, and Lincoln simply took it in stride.15
It is not hard to imagine where Booth got the idea of capturing Lincoln. Hundreds of Confederate soldiers had served under Bradley Johnson, and any one of them could have given up the details of his mission on a trip home. Four men from Booth’s Exeter Street neighborhood had served in the Baltimore Light Artillery, which took part in the abortive raid on Washington. All had grown up with O’Laughlen, and if they had seen Booth during one of his occasional visits, they might well have mentioned their near brush with history.16
BOOTH SPENT MOST OF SEPTEMBER in the Pennsylvania oil region, where he closed out the business he had started only months before. He put up half the cost of a permanent lease on his riverfront property. Then, having secured his ownership rights, he signed them all away. He had a good reason for doing so. The government was confiscating the property of supposed rebels, and Booth knew that if he were caught in a conspiracy, they would take everything he owned. So he divested himself of all his property. He signed two-thirds of his Dramatic Oil stock over to his brother Junius, and the remainder went to Joe Simonds. He gave the Pit-hole Creek stock to his sister Rosalie, and after one final payment, his Boston property would go to Mary Ann.17
Booth never saw a penny from his investments. The Dramatic Oil well, nicknamed “the Wilhelmina,” pumped hardly more than a trickle, and the driller’s attempt to blast it did more harm than good. In all, the venture cost Booth six thousand dollars and depleted much of his savings. Drilling was suspended, and all his accounts settled. The theatrical season was already under way, and Booth told Simonds that he had no more time for oil. He wanted to get back to the stage.18
In fact, he wanted nothing of the sort. Writing from the oil region, he asked Sam Arnold to pick out a good saddle horse. He enclosed twenty dollars and said he would return as soon as he got the chance. Arnold was helping a neighbor thresh wheat when a messenger handed him Booth’s letter. A man named Littleton Newman saw the look on his face when he read it, and asked what was wrong. Arnold showed him the note, but Newman could make no sense of it. Arnold assured him that he would understand someday. It would be in all the newspapers.19
MARYLAND VOTERS WENT to the polls in October to determine the future of their state. They were voting on a new constitution, which outlawed slavery. The institution had survived thus far because emancipation touched only those states in rebellion, and Maryland had never seceded. Still, there could be no doubt that its days were numbered. Appraisers in Hagerstown had recently valued a group of slaves at just five dollars each, regardless of age or physical condition.20
Voters were required to affirm their allegiance to the Union, and Senator Reverdy Johnson complained that as written, the loyalty oath kept all Democrats away from the polls. In earlier times, that controversy would have torn the state in half, but by the fall of 1864, Democrats had lost much of their fighting spirit. Major General Lew Wallace, in command since the spring, had softened his approach to the occupation of Baltimore. He allowed civilian police officers to take their jobs back, and he guaranteed a speedy hearing for anyone arrested in his command. He even declined to interfere in the October election, except on the written request of Governor Bradford. With conditions thus improved, Democrats lost the issues that had once united Marylanders against the administration.
This was only the second election to allow the use of absentee ballots, and as it happened, those “soldier votes” made all the difference. In the initial count, citizens rejected the new constitution by a margin of two thousand votes. But when the absentee ballots came in, the measure narrowly passed. Critics cried foul. An editorial in the New York World said “soldiers’ votes were ‘needed’ to secure the adoption of [the constitution] and they were cooked up to an exactly sufficient amount.” The New York Daily News put it in even stronger terms:
The last refuge and hope of law, order, and constitutional government, trampled under foot, it becomes the bounden duty of every man among us who would be free, to look, like our revolutionary fathers, to the remedy of his own right hand; and, standing on his constitutional rights, to declare in the face of bastille or banishment, or still better, in front of hurtling battle, that “resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” 21
Democrats charged the president with vote tampering, and said that there was nothing to stop him from “re-electing himself ” the following month.
UNTIL THE ELECTION, Booth seems to have done little work on his plot. On the fourth of September, Dave Herold, the pharmacy clerk, quit his job, and may have joined the conspiracy. But otherwise it remained dormant. Enlisting help was a delicate matter, and Booth had to feel his way carefully. For practical purposes, he could have sold himself in one of two ways: as the leader of a daring plot whose success would startle the world, or as an officer specially selected to lead a critically important operation. To most people, that first option would have sounded quixotic and perhaps suicidal. The second had some real advantages. It suggested that Booth had obtained the approval and support of intelligent, responsible authorities in Richmond—people who would not cut him adrift in the event of capture. Realistically, this was Booth’s only choice. But since it required official sponsorship, he either had to enlist the support of Confederate officials, or had to find a way to fake it.
Sooner or later, Booth would have to pass along the idea to authorities in Richmond. After all, he could not just show up unannounced with Abraham Lincoln in handcuffs. A meeting shouldn’t have been hard to arrange, considering the friendships Booth had made in Richmond before the war. Nor would it have been hard for him to get there, since many agents— including some familiar to Herold—went to the rebel capital on a regular basis. But instead of pursuing that course, Booth took a roundabout route that, on the surface, made no sense at all: he went to Canada.
The Confederate operation in Canada was run by Jacob Thompson, of the State Department, and Clement C. Clay, of the War Department. Together, they devised schemes to “give the Abolitionists trouble in the rear” while regular troops occupied their attention on the battlefront. Canada’s strict neutrality laws prohibited them from waging war across the border, but those laws did not keep them from encouraging private citizens to act on their own. And indeed, transplanted Southerners showed no lack of inventiveness in helping the cause. John Porterfield, a former banker from Nashville, had a plan to destabilize United States currency with a buyout of greenbacks. George P. Kane, of Maryland, wanted to free prisoners of war from Johnson’s Island in Lake Erie. Dr. L
uke P. Blackburn, of Kentucky, proposed spreading yellow fever to the North through infected clothing. There were undoubtedly other schemes as well, but few details have come to light. We know that Kane, the former police marshal of Baltimore, had some other plan that was to be implemented in his home state, but whatever it was, General Lee refused to endorse it. Rev. Kensey Johns Stewart suggested something as well, and Lee nixed his proposal outright.22
Along with the schemers came a class of entrepreneurs who flocked to Montreal just to cash in on Lincoln’s blockade of Southern ports. Confederates in Canada could not travel directly to the South, but for an exorbitant fee they could hire someone to take them and their goods to a third-party location, such as Bermuda, then arrange passage from there to the Southern states on a British ship. For anyone in a hurry, the direct route was still available, and the more greedy and adventurous were not deterred by the risks involved.
Nearly every scheme that was hatched in Canada failed, and according to Jacob Thompson, it was not hard to see why. “The bane and curse of carrying out anything in this country,” he wrote, “is the surveillance under which we act. Detectives, or those ready to give information, stand at every street corner. Two or three cannot interchange ideas without a reporter.” Yet this was the place to which Booth took his hostage idea.23
It would have been safer and simpler to present his plan in Richmond. Though the Confederate capital had its share of Union spies, they were hardly as pervasive as those in the free and open streets of Montreal. And if Booth were planning to take Lincoln to Richmond, he would have to have the cooperation of agents who knew the way, and who went there routinely. However, there is a good chance he saw that as a drawback. After all, he had no credentials as a covert operative, and more plausible schemes than his were rejected by the rebel government. What if they refused to sanction his plan? What if they approved of the idea, but assigned the job to an experienced agent? Nearly every one of those people on the route to Richmond would have known that, and Booth’s claims of official backing would have fallen on deaf ears. He would have lost his last chance to do something glorious for the Cause.
American Brutus Page 18
